Another 25 N.C. Patients Notified Of Stolen Tissue Transplants

POSTED: 4:22 am EST January 9, 2006

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Another 25 patients at North Carolina hospitals have been
notified that they may have received transplants of human tissue that was
stolen from funeral homes in New York, bringing the statewide total to more
than 75 people who may have been effected.

Officials at Concord's NorthEast Medical Center notified 22 people who had
surgery between September 2003 and this October that they may have received
the tissue. Three patients from Rowan Regional Medical Center in Salisbury
also were to be notified.

Other hospitals across the state said Thursday that a total of more than 50
people who were treated at their facilities may have had stolen tissue
implanted.

None of the patients appears to have been harmed, according to officials at
Carolinas Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, Catawba
Valley Medical Center in Hickory, WakeMed and Duke Health Raleigh in
Raleigh, Duke University Medical Center in Durham, and Southeast Regional
Medical Center in Lumberton.

Biomedical Tissue Services of New Jersey is under investigation for
allegedly removing bone and tissue from corpses without permission from
families and selling them for reconstructive surgery. No charges have been
filed.

The company provides tissue for manufacturers that process it in batches and
package it for surgical use.

Spokesmen for NorthEast and Rowan Regional had said earlier this week that
they had not received suspect tissue. But Lee Brower of NorthEast and Phil
Whitesell of Rowan Regional told The Charlotte Observer on Friday that they
were wrong.

The tissue in question came from companies that bought body parts from
Biomedical Tissue Services, which is being investigated by the district
attorney's office in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration.

Investigators are trying to determine whether skin, bones, tendons and other
body parts were illegally removed from corpses and sold to five processing
plants around the country that test, sterilize and shape the material before
it is used in surgery.
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